Sunday, May 10, 2015

Every veterinarian has, or had a mother......And many are one themself...
So this....

A little girl wears the look on her
face. Her mom knows the look. Moms are smart that way. They know what
to watch for when they want to see if the tyke is headed for trouble,
like that mischievous change in a little girl's face. Mom lets her
wander a bit further this time. But, although one eye might be on the
bowl of snap beans in her lap, the mom's other eye stays locked on
the little girl.

The blonde, blue-eyed girl is 3 years
old, so the world is a very big place. She knows she isn't supposed
to walk all the way to the back of the yard, but there might be
something worth seeing over there. She toddles off in that direction.
Along the way, she glances back toward her mom. Am I caught yet?
Nothing happens. I'm in the clear! What a fine adventure. Soon she is
lost in exploring, poking about here and there, peering over and
under stuff at all the wonders of the world.

A strange noise. The little girl feels
that creep of fear. Turning quickly, she looks for her mom.
Everything is OK, because mom is sitting right over there, watching
her. Everything is OK.

Years pass, and the little girl is no
longer little, and when she toddles off, mom is no longer in sight.
The girl goes searching for something worth seeing over there. Mom
can still spot that look on the girl's face that tells when she is
headed for trouble. And mom finds the courage to let her go again.
Mom cannot see, but the phone sits just beside her chair, and when it
rings, and it is the girl checking to see if mom is still watching,
she is. And everything is OK.

The girl becomes a woman, and when she
goes exploring for something worth seeing, over there is across a
country away. She doesn't look back nearly as often. And mom learns
to stop searching for her in the yard. But when the woman feels that
creep of fear, she reaches for the phone again, and mom answers
before it rings. And everything is OK.

And then the woman finds herself with
one eye on the snap beans, and the other on her own little blonde,
blue-eyed girl who is headed over there. And she reaches for the
phone with something to share, something new to her, and oh so
familiar for mom. And everything is OK.

Decades pass, and the woman walks upon
a lonely beach. Dark fog hovers near, and the sea is nervous that
day, bearing a watchful eye as she is near the surf. She is working
through the morass of things bouncing around inside her head, and she
feels the creep of fear again. She cannot turn to see mom watching
over her, and be comforted by that. She would dearly love to dial the
phone, but mom is no longer there to answer. Instead, there is a vast
hole in her heart.

But just then, at that very moment, the
woman looks down, and she finds, lying on the dark sand, a fingernail
size fragment of seashell, pure white, and carved by the waves into a
perfect heart shape. A gift from the sea, or someone else? The woman
looks up.

Saturday, May 2, 2015

The lady was in the cat side of
reception, looking through the window at my receptionist. She'd never
been in before, and I could tell she was checking us out, to see if
we were worthy of her cat and her business. That's fine. I do the
same thing when I first visit a dentist or even a barber. You want to
be comfortable in such an environment.

I was on our side of the counter,
leaning and essentially worthless for the moment, although the staff
is polite enough not to ever say that. The lady seemed a bit, oh I
don't know, hostile is too harsh but she clearly wasn't just blending
in as I've come to expect from my clients. Then she saw the cat. That
was the deal breaker.

Jaws was lying on the counter, next to
Karen, our receptionist and the best friend of Jaws.

The back story. Jaws came to us as an
emaciated, flea infested, filthy orange and white striped eight
week old kitten. She was hungry, and she demonstrated that with her
rather prodigious appetite. She attacked food. So we named her, Jaws.

Jaws was, oh hell let's be honest, fat.
And she hung out with Karen, for when the office was closed for lunch
and Karen was eating said lunch at her desk, there was this other
plate where some of Karen's lunch showed up in front of Jaws every
day. The two were inseparable during business hours. I had no problem
with this, and my loyal clients loved to see Jaws on the counter,
digesting part of Karen's lunch.

Anyway, this lady saw Jaws on the
counter next to Karen, and she just about screamed. She was incensed.
She was outraged.

“There's a cat on your counter.”

Ah, yep. That's Jaws. She lives here.

“That's unsanitary. I'd never bring
my cat into a place like this!”

Oh, well that's fine. Maybe you should
just leave and go find some other veterinary hospital where the
resident cat doesn't hang out on the counter. Because you will never
be happy here.

Good luck with that. In my experience,
most veterinary hospitals have what we call hospital cats. Such cats
are generally fat, and they hang out on counters or wherever they
damn well please, and the people working in those veterinary
hospitals love those cats far better than they like BITCHY OLD SELF
IMPORTANT WITCHES!

Oh, I'm sorry. Was I shouting?

In my experience, most veterinary
hospitals, filled with people who care about their clients' animals, always
have a few of their own beloved companions hanging about the place.
It's just me talking here, but I wouldn't be comfortable in a
veterinary hospital that didn't have a few, uh, normal challenged,
animals living there.

Normal challenged?

Yeah, I usually say that you have to be
defective to work in a veterinary hospital, but my wife takes some
offense at that, and says for the animals at least, I should use the
term, “normal challenged” when speaking about the cats and dogs
living in veterinary hospitals.

Ya see, most of the animals living in
veterinary hospitals have had issues before they came to live with
us. Often they are missing various parts, a toe, a leg, a tail, an
eye. They often have been abandoned by uncaring owners, or simply
adopted by the staff when somebody wanted them dead because they were
missing a part or were something less than perfect. They say the
fastest route to insanity is to care more for the animals than the
people who own them, and that may be true. But, it certainly is the
fastest route to accumulating a few more hospital cats.

I look back on our hospital cats, to
Moocher, Sam, Momma Tom, Kung Foo, Spaz, Jaws, Mohamed Ali, One Eyed
Jack, Quirk, Lefty, Jill, and Herky and I wouldn't trade one of them
for the opportunity to serve a woman who couldn't stomach seeing one
of ours in our own hospital.

I was thinking about Herky today. He
came to us as Herkimer, a ten month old tomcat who got into one too
many cat fights, and sustained an abscess in the middle of his back,
the consequence of a bite wound. We sent home the usual antibiotics,
and all would have been fine except that this bite wound had
penetrated to the bone of one vertebrae. The owner noticed that
Herkimer was paralyzed at some point and after letting this steep for
far too long, and when it didn't “get better by itself”, finally
rushed him in. Not surprisingly, he was still paralyzed. Another
course of antibiotics actually returned him to normal, but when the
owner didn't follow up as we had suggested with further treatment
with more antibiotics, he went down in the rear again. When they
finally brought him back in, his rear legs were history. They
couldn't have cared less.

So Herky came to live with us, and for
the next twelve years he slid around our hospital with two good front
legs and a back end that came along for the ride. He couldn't feel
anything behind his last rib, so he bathed to there and stopped. He
built up some fine callouses on the right side and slid along the
smooth concrete floors as if they were designed for him. We tried to
build him a cart, but he kept spinning out in the corners, so we just
let him do as he preferred.

Some clients saw Herky sliding along
the floor, and they felt sorry for him. They'd ask if we were going
to put him to sleep because he was suffering, and then he'd slide up
to them and rub his chin against their ankles purring until they'd
pet him, and then it would dawn on them that he was actually a pretty
happy cat. And he was.

What I remember best about Herky was
his wisdom. From time to time I'd have one of those days when I'd
rather be the janitor in a porno theater than to continue this
nonsense of being a veterinarian. I'd wander back to the kennel to
Herky's home expecting some sympathy, some understanding from a
paralyzed cat when I was having a bad day.....and he would bite me.
It kinds boiled down to one simple thing. Herky wouldn't listen
unless I brought a complaint with some legitimacy. If I was just
whining, he'd bite me. Come to me when you've got something important
to say, and I'll listen. Smart cat. I learned much from him.

Due to his medical issues, Herky
couldn't pee on his own. We needed to hold him over the sink and with
gentle finger pressure, we'd empty his bladder each day. When we let
him out of his cage each morning, he'd slide around on the floor
until he moved his bowels, and that took care of that, most days. But
each and every day, somebody needed to express Herky's bladder. On
Sunday, that was my job.

Before doing anything fun on Sunday, my
only day off, so to speak, I would first have to drive over the hill
to the clinic, and squeeze Herky. It became something of a routine.
Once I'd done that, my day off could begin. For twelve years.

Right now, we are remodeling our home, because when we finally sell the practice and we can retire, the house
will also be sold and we will move to paradise for the remaining days
of our lives. So right now, our cats are living at the clinic. So
that means, on the weekends I get to drive over the hill to the
clinic and make sure the litter pans are clean and the cats have
fresh water and food. I was doing just that today, and while I
enjoyed the scenery on the drive, it dawned on me that as many times
as I have done this, this drive over the hill to the clinic to care
for the cats at the clinic on the weekends when normal people are
simply enjoying their weekends away from their work, I would soon no
longer need to fulfill this duty..... and that brought a tear to my
eyes.

Friday, May 1, 2015

I made my Mom laugh really hard once.
Didn't intend to, but that is what happens sometimes when you're
convinced you know everything, and you haven't yet been shown the
error of your ways.

Immersed in some version of teen angst,
and seeing no quick and easy way through, I was thinking out loud.
Mother had been a teen once, which didn't make her an expert on
solving teen angst, but then Mom took after me; she didn't need to be
an expert in order to voice her opinion. I can laugh at this bit now,
but at the time I was dead serious.

Me, “I can't wait to grow up.”

Mom, “Why's that?”

Me, “Well, this being a teenager is
just so full of problems, but when I am an adult, I won't have near
so much difficulty.”

I'll give Mom credit, because she tried
out of politeness to remain cool in the face of my folly. But, as
Rocky the flying squirrel once noted, that trick never works. Mom
finally wailed with laughter as she staggered out of the room. At the
time, I had no idea why she did that. I have since learned what she
knew I would.

Some decades ago I took a walk in the
mountains. The John Muir Trail through the best of the Sierra Nevada
mountain range is some 220 miles long, and I didn't rush through it,
taking some 18 days to finish. Didn't cross a road for the entire
length. Nothing but wilderness, altitude, scenery, and wonder filled
my days and nights on the trail. It was difficult and thrilling. I
remember most all of this. But the part I distinctly recall was that
last day as I walked down the mountain toward the dusty truck we left
parked on the road, that time of triumph and accomplishment, and also
the utter disappointment of knowing that this unparalleled experience
must end. Such joy. Such sadness. Such life.

In June of 1972 I walked into the
building. It was brand new, having opened for business on the first
of the month. I was brand new also, having finished up at the School
of Veterinary Medicine just a few weeks earlier. On July 1st
I officially began working there, and I've been showing up to work in
that building most every day since. Forty-three years.

And now I'm walking down the mountain
again, approaching the end of another journey. I am filled with the
triumph and accomplishment, and also the utter disappointment of
knowing that this unparalleled experience must end. I'm putting my
practice on the market so that I can retire. It's time to go
elsewhere in life.

Mom was correct of course. That bit
about being a grown-up, about not having any more problems....well
that never quite happened. Practice was not a party. It had its
moments of unforgettable joy, and success, and also those of gut
wrenching disappointment and pain. Sitting at this end of my career,
I now have the luxury of looking back at the good and bad that
happened over four decades, of trying to make sense of it all, and of
trying to measure the success or failure of my life, at least that
large part spent in that building.

In other words, I now am enjoying yet
another dose of what I can only call grown up angst.

The voice on the radio yesterday was
talking about the riots, looting, and arson devastating an Eastern
city, and since his job is to incite outrage, he decided to excuse
the lawbreakers by stating that they only torched a few storefronts.
No big deal, right? I listened with interest.

Show of hands.....who knows that there
were two veterinary hospitals in the path of the rioters, looters,
and arsonists that destroyed much of Fergusen, MO? Those two
buildings did not make the news because they didn't burn to the
ground. They didn't burn to the ground because terrified men stood
outside them with shotguns, facing down the mob.

Have you ever wondered if you would do
such a thing? When the last bunch of riots were only miles away from my practice, I wondered. Would you stand in the way of a mob, the wall of a building at
your back, the shotgun in hand, just so angry people wouldn't burn
the place down?

Would your decision be influenced by
the fact that you have worked your entire adult life inside that
building, doing important service for the animals and their people,
and also supporting your family through thick and thin? Would a
building that represents so much of your personal identity really be
missed if it became a pile of ashes? Would your decision be
influenced by the sad reality that the building represents a
significant part of your retirement savings, an investment you worked
decades to create, the difference between not getting by or having
some comfort? Take on such a discussion in your head in the dark of
night sometime. You won't enjoy it either.

When you put a veterinary practice up
for sale, you open your business to evaluation. Some things don't
come into play. You are trying to sell a business, so things like
saving a kitten at no cost to a little girl can go into the memory
bank, but since that other bank doesn't enter into the equation, this
doesn't count. Not one thing you did just because you felt it was the
right thing to do counts now. That number in the computer, all those
times you trusted someone who promised to pay, and did not...that
number works against you now, too.

Every time you cut a corner because
someone begged you to do less than a good job, now counts against
you. Every time you didn't raise your fees to keep up with inflation,
because so many of your clients were out of work, counts against you.
Even the fact that you worked all those extra hours, just so you
could help more animals and their people.....even this now works
against you.

The numbers are all in the computer.
You cannot hide from them. You cannot hide them. And the person who
may look to buy your practice will wonder why those numbers make this
business look so feeble. What you did all your life to help, means
nothing.

Bad business doesn't sell. And if you
cannot sell it, those four decades of work trying to help, trying to
be the good guy....well that just makes a veterinary practice's
contribution to retirement less and less. A lifetime of trying to
build that investment squandered. It's only money, you might say, and
that would be true. You still have the sense of satisfaction of
knowing you wanted to help.

But when the young doctors ask you why
they shouldn't let a client promise to pay a bill, you had best tell
them the truth. When they someday are old, and
struggling to pay the rent because they sacrificed as they bent
backwards to help, they will remember the advice you tried to give,
and they tried so hard to ignore.

When I retire I will have enough, but
yeah....something more than just enough would be nice. I'd like to do
more with my retirement, but I know I cannot. I will have memories
and satisfaction. And that will have to do.

I'm almost at the end of my trail,
often looking back now. With mixed emotions, regrets and smiles. Not
a victim, but a product of all those decades. I get to live with all those decisions.

Things

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